Yesterday, I caught the fourth installment of the alien robots, Transformers, and can I just ask why movies as such always have idiotic human beings who are afraid of other living things who are actually helping them?

In Transformers: Age of Extinction, the Autobots were hunted by a team called Cemetery Wind led by James Savoy (Titus Welliver) four years after the epic battle in Chicago and they went into hiding. But alas, some of the Autobots were found, such as Ratchet, who begged for his life but was refused and killed by another Transformer named Lockdown, after Ratchet refused to give away Optimus Prime’s location. (Writer’s note: DAMN YOU, HUMANS! BELOVED RATCHET!) The wanted (and injured) Optimus Prime was found hidden in a broken down theatre by Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg). Cade helped to hide the leader of the Autobots in his barn but was found by Cemetery Wind, who was working with the CIA. The Yeager family’s life were threatened but Optimus Prime came to the rescue. Eventually, Optimus Prime came back to full health and teamed up with the other surviving Autobots – Hound, Drift, Crosshairs and the ever-loving Bumblebee. Together with their new human allies, they searched for the reason for the killings of their kind and hunted down Lockdown.

This is probably the first and the last time you’ll read this from me but I missed Shia LaBeouf in this movie. I love the friendship between Bumbleebee and Sam. There was a great connection there that is truly missed in Age of Extinction. The new human characters tried hard to re-create the bond but I personally don’t think it can replace the Sam and Bumblebee friendship even though Bumblebee is still, well, Bumblebee.

The movie is also three hours’ long and you might wonder if it would be able to keep the attention of the kids who might be watching the movie. The answer is yes. How do I know that? My nephew ‘s first word after watching the movie was: “Best!” and I did not see any kids moving in and out of the theatre or being generally restless, only the adults. The kids’ attention were transfixed to the screen.

Even though the kids love it, I do find the movie way too long. I do understand that it’s introducing a bunch of new human characters but it just feels a little bit draggy for me. I do not recall the first movie of Transformers, which introduced Sam and his family, being this long. It is still enjoyable but I personally feel that it could be shorter. Instead of three hours, it could be shortened to two hours and a half. Everyone loves the Autobots, I certainly do, but this is not Harry Potter nor is it The Lord of the Rings. (Writer’s note: These movies were cited here because they are about a journey (literally or metaphorically) to get to a destination, in which three hours is reasonable in this case, and not an action-packed movie about alien robots!) It does not need to be a three-hour-long movie.

Other than that, the effects were still fantastic, the Dinobots were awesome (and cute) and there were also funny scenes interspersed in between such as Bumblebee destroying the entire robot lab and transforming back into a car, putting the blame on a human character while playing “Can’t Touch This” from his radio and Optimus Prime sympathizing with Cade after observing the issue he had with his daughter, chiming in that he’s experiencing the same issue with Bumblebee.

As I still enjoy the movie despite the length of the movie, I give it a 3.5 out of 5.

The trailer…